New Cortana ads by Microsoft focus on Valentine’s Day

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BY Unknown 02:55 0

New Cortana ads by Microsoft focus on Valentine’s Day

With Valentine’s Day almost upon us, Microsoft decided to release a couple of new promotional videos for Cortana, its very own virtual personal assistant. As you’d expect given the Valentine’s Day theme, the ads are all about love. The Lumia 635 smartphone is featured in them too, though oddly with a Microsoft logo replacing Nokia’s.

In the first video, one man is happy that despite having broken up with his girlfriend around Valentine’s, which isn’t fun, he’s quickly managed to find someone new. Not only that, but he’s apparently blown away by how well she knows him.

So that’s one lucky guy, right? Well, it turns out he’s not alone. The other video is about a woman telling her parents that she finally met someone who brings out the best in her.

Around this time of the year every company seems to think it’s obliged to release some kind of promotional material with a Valentine’s Day focus. And while Microsoft hasn’t bucked the trend, it managed to bring some neat humor along for its ride.

How Cortana on Windows 10 came to be a part of it

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BY Unknown 21:29 0

How Cortana on Windows 10 came to be a part of it

Cortana is just one of the many new features that Windows 10 will bring to eager users. But among the overwhelming sea of new performance and experience improvements, cross-device support and advanced features it is easy to overlook the seemingly plain assistant ant its place in the new OS.

The truth is that Cortana is aiming to be a truly inspired and innovative take on assistant software which has gone far beyond the clever voice search tool it started out as on Windows Phone devices. The team behind the software has taken the time to walk interested users through the steps it took to create the assistant and explain how clever and personal it can actually be. This was done through a rather lengthy blog post on Microsoft’s website and a short video that can be seen below.

Here is the gist of what Cortana actually is the way its creators actually see it. And their description of Cortana conveys a pretty clear picture:

Cortana gets to know you and helps you get things done, all while letting you interact naturally and easily. By learning more about you over time, Cortana becomes increasingly useful every day. She will learn your preferences, provide quick access to information, and make recommendations personalized for you. You’re always in control of what Cortana knows and manages on your behalf.

The creative team is really excited about Cortana on Windows 10 as that is where the software will really be able to spread its wings and uncover its full potential. While working on the assistant the team had three main goals to focus on:

Cortana is above all personal. It really gets to know you with the ultimate goal of really aiding you in the right way at the right time. But while the possibility of a software being aware of your personality and adapting to it sound truly exciting it is also equally frightening, which is why Microsoft has put special emphasis on protection and security.

A special Notebook feature will allow you to view and adjust what Cortana knows about you and has access too at any given point and it is the team’s goal to make all of your interactions with the assistant as useful, timely and non-intrusive as possible.

Cortana’s most prominent feature is that it truly comes with a personality of its own. Microsoft put special emphasis on communication aiming for a fluent and natural discourse model that ultimately aims to make Cortana feel like an actual person. While this is not a new concept, Cortana promises to break new ground by delivering truly life-like interactions.

Our approach on personality includes defining a voice with an actual personality. This included writing a detailed personality, and laying out how we wanted Cortana to be perceived. We used words like witty, confident and loyal to describe how Cortana responds through voice, text and animated character. We wrote an actual script based on this definition that is spoken by a trained voice actress with thousands of responses to questions that will have variability to make Cortana feel like it has an actual personality and isn’t just programmed with robotic responses.

Cracking jokes, imitating dialects and seamlessly integrating into work and leisure across all your devices, this is the future that Microsoft plans for Cortana. The personal assistant is poised as the next big time-saver to ease you in the increasingly frantic and information rich lifestyle and the front stage position in Windows 10 can really make this a reality. One can hope, there’s more than just PR talk in all this.

Cortana update brings a new Lifestyle interest with Fitness Tracker

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BY Unknown 16:58 0

Cortana update brings a new Lifestyle interest with Fitness Tracker

Just a couple of days after there were reports that Microsoft will soon integrate Cortana into its Office productivity suite the Redmond-based company has updated its digital assistant with a new interest category.

Dubbed Lifestyle, the category contains a Fitness Tracker that claims it will “keep up with your workouts.” The update seems to be rolling out slowly, as not everyone has received it yet.

For those who are unaware, Microsoft updates Cortana twice a month.

Microsoft Office will soon have Cortana integration

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BY Unknown 18:53 0

Microsoft Office will soon have Cortana integration

According to a report in The Verge, Microsoft will soon integrate Cortana into its Office productivity suite. The highly capable virtual assistant will be available in both mobile and desktop guise in the near future.

A Microsoft Office “Work Assistant” application is reportedly in testing. The solution utilizes Cortana to “open, edit, and share documents using voice commands.” The initial app by Microsoft is said to be a prototype for the time being.

Cortana integration into Microsoft Office could mark the arrival of the Redmond giant’s virtual assistant to iOS and Android. Microsoft has already hinted at such plans in the past.

Nokia Conference app now to be called Join Conference for Windows Phone, gains Cortana support

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BY Unknown 00:07 0

Nokia Conference app now to be called Join Conference for Windows Phone, gains Cortana support

The latest Nokia product for Windows Phone to lose the Nokia branding is the app formerly known as Nokia Conference. From now on, it will live on as Join Conference. The name change has been made official through its latest update, which is now up for grabs in the Windows Phone app store.

The new name isn’t the only change, however. Join Conference has received support for Cortana, which means you can now simply say “join conference” and Cortana will do its magic for you.

Cortana will automatically figure out which conference is currently ongoing or about to start, speak it back to you for confirmation, then connect you. As you may have guessed, Join Conference is all about making it easy to dial into conference calls. The app promises that if you use it you’ll no longer need to switch to the Calendar app, remember ID/PIN codes, get the right access number, switch to the phone app, make the call, and then enter all those codes. Instead you either tap one button or use Cortana as described above.

Join Conference is still in Beta, yet according to Microsoft it should work with all conference systems, since the settings for many companies’ setups are stored on on its servers and recognized automatically. If you use a system that isn’t recognized, you can define its settings yourself, after which you can share them with Microsoft so your coworkers won’t have to manually add them too.